I've just finished the 225-turn 41-45 campaign with an Axis major victory (255 VPs) for me playing against the Russian AI.

I started the game on version 1.03.05 beta and finished it with the latest patch, version 1.05.45 beta.

I held Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov through to the end but never made it to Stalingrad. Interestingly, Soviet AFV losses totalled 84,580 compared with the actual historical loss of 83,500.

I started playing the campaign in February, and it gave me a very entertaining and mind-exercising diversion in my spare time while I spent most of this year away from home in another city because of a major work project. In fact, I found War in the East so enjoyable, I never once watched TV in my hotel room at nights while I was away. Am I a War in the East tragic, or what?

Observations:

1. As other players have observed, capturing Leningrad in 1941 (which I did) is a prerequisite for surviving the distance. 2. In 1942, my major campaign was to capture Moscow (which I did) with a diversionary campaign in the south to keep the AI from throwing everything against my Moscow campaign. 3. I was mostly on the defensive from the start of 1944, holding the line I had won. 4. From 1944, I found it very costly to make any headway against the strong Soviet units. I adopted the Manstein strategy of letting the Russian AI force units through my line, and then I would cut them apart with my reserves. This became even more pronounced with the last two patches, where the AI had been reprogrammed to be more aggressive. 5. I found the best defensive formation was to maintain three-unit stacks every alternate hex, with mobile reserves behind the line to smash up Soviet units pushing through the gaps. As mentioned in Point 4, the AI was far more aggressive in pushing units through these gaps in the last two patches ... although mostly to its cost when the advance units had low combat power. 6. I know there's a quite a rigourous debate on this forum about the air campaign, but I was reasonably satisfied with it. I discovered late in the game that it was better to manually assign aircraft upgrades, rather than let that function happen automatically. Soviet air losses at the end were ten times mine (73,191 versus 7147). 7. From 1944, the AI kept hammering away in the north trying to retake Leningrad, and concentrated some very powerful units up there. It was quite a challenge and I had to reinforce the Finnish units with quality German divisions. 8. By May 1945, I was actually in a position to conduct a small offensive just north of Rostov after the Soviet AI had burnt out a lot of powerful units in an attempt to break my line.

My grateful thanks to the developers of War in the East. Money well spent.

I'm going to try a small scenario until the latest batch of changes have been made and then start another campaign.

Posts: 3070
Joined: 11/26/2009 From: Living in the fair city of Melbourne, AustraliaStatus: offline

Very nice post Gremell :)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gremell 5. I found the best defensive formation was to maintain three-unit stacks every alternate hex, with mobile reserves behind the line to smash up Soviet units pushing through the gaps. As mentioned in Point 4, the AI was far more aggressive in pushing units through these gaps in the last two patches ... although mostly to its cost when the advance units had low combat power.

That's something that surely works well for the Axis while their infantry is strong... did your perception of this change as your units quality degraded (if it degraded at all, of course :) )?

That tactic of stacking up every other hex.....I haven't played any late games to know if that works vs. humans. Many are reporting that good counterattacks against Rifle Corps, though, result in high German casualties. The Russians will suffer more, but of course, they can afford it.

A valid countertactic might be to shove forward a Rifle Corps (saving it from Combat), with AT guns attached, and allowing it to get smacked. It will withdraw, but not before killing some Germans.

At that point the hex has no forts; either German then defend in open, or retreat.

That's something that surely works well for the Axis while their infantry is strong... did your perception of this change as your units quality degraded (if it degraded at all, of course :) )? [/quote]

Yes, my infantry did degrade the longer the campaign went and many of my infantry divsions were not much better than weak brigades by 1945. However, I was able to keep up the strength of my stacks with the following measures:

1. Being careful to select the few infantry divisions that retain a respectable combat power throughout the game for front-line service.

2. Directly attaching support units, especially SP guns and 88mm AT units, to divisions. I would firstly attach these to the best divisions to turn them into super divisions with greater staying power. If any support units were left over, I attached these to the lesser divisions. I never left non-artillery support units at corps level, which would have been subject to chance allocation.

3. Leaving the much-maligned Luftwaffe field divisions on garrison duty in towns and cities until they train up to good experience and morale figures, and then moving them into the front-line stacks. In fact, by 1945 some of those Luftwaffe divisions were my strongest infantry units in terms of manpower, experience and morale.

4. Making good use of Hungarian infantry. By 1945, most of these units have better combat strength than a standard German infantry division.

5. Moving a panzer division into a stack to reinforce threatened areas. It was not my favourite approach, because I wanted to keep all my panzer divisions for mobile defence. However, when quality infantry was not available, I had no choice.

6. Cycling battered infantry divisions out of the front line and onto a rail line to refit and replacing them with rested units.

7. Ensuring my stacks had sufficient corps artillery support. I spread this evenly because I remember reading in the manual somewhere that the game mechanics will not use more than six artillery units in support, unless you are attacking a city. So, having more than six artillery units in any of my corps would have been a waste. General, corps artillery support averaged about three units.

8. And, lastly, ensuring my fortification level for my stacks was at least three. Mostly, they were at strength four. Some were at five but this happened before one of the patches stopped this happening unless you held a port city.

Do you have a rough idea how many hours of play it took you to finish the 41-45 campaign?

I started on February 16 and finished yesterday, December 10. I didn't play every day, but when I did I probably spent about one to three hours on a couple of turns. Sometimes I would get into it for only a single turn, especially when there was a lot to plan.

At a very rough guess, it took me somewhere between 250 to 330 hours to complete the whole 225-turn campaign game. (225 turns takes you to October 4, 1945.)

I kept a savegame of every turn in case I found issues which the developers may have needed. Indeed, I did do this. I was the person who found that the Ist SS Panzer Division didn't withdraw in 1944 and you ended up with two 1st SS Panzers on the board when it returned. (I parked the duplicate returning division on the western edge of the board.)

Better use your brain in a it large strategic campaign based on history then to let it melt away watching the 100 IDOLS spin off.....

Feck everyone who thinks watching tv is ok and playing a game is for nerds...

OMG how true is this.

I have been playing wargames for 34 years and still, gamers are nerds. You think its bad now even when there are professional gamers and millions of dollars up for grabs as prize money for games like Star Craft? Back in my day, we were less welcome than the plague.

As for the reality shows and spins off as you mentioned...yeah whatever turns you on.

Posts: 3070
Joined: 11/26/2009 From: Living in the fair city of Melbourne, AustraliaStatus: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gremell

quote:

ORIGINAL: BletchleyGeek

That's something that surely works well for the Axis while their infantry is strong... did your perception of this change as your units quality degraded (if it degraded at all, of course :) )?

Yes, my infantry did degrade the longer the campaign went and many of my infantry divsions were not much better than weak brigades by 1945. However, I was able to keep up the strength of my stacks with the following measures:

1. Being careful to select the few infantry divisions that retain a respectable combat power throughout the game for front-line service.

2. Directly attaching support units, especially SP guns and 88mm AT units, to divisions. I would firstly attach these to the best divisions to turn them into super divisions with greater staying power. If any support units were left over, I attached these to the lesser divisions. I never left non-artillery support units at corps level, which would have been subject to chance allocation.

3. Leaving the much-maligned Luftwaffe field divisions on garrison duty in towns and cities until they train up to good experience and morale figures, and then moving them into the front-line stacks. In fact, by 1945 some of those Luftwaffe divisions were my strongest infantry units in terms of manpower, experience and morale.

4. Making good use of Hungarian infantry. By 1945, most of these units have better combat strength than a standard German infantry division.

5. Moving a panzer division into a stack to reinforce threatened areas. It was not my favourite approach, because I wanted to keep all my panzer divisions for mobile defence. However, when quality infantry was not available, I had no choice.

6. Cycling battered infantry divisions out of the front line and onto a rail line to refit and replacing them with rested units.

7. Ensuring my stacks had sufficient corps artillery support. I spread this evenly because I remember reading in the manual somewhere that the game mechanics will not use more than six artillery units in support, unless you are attacking a city. So, having more than six artillery units in any of my corps would have been a waste. General, corps artillery support averaged about three units.

8. And, lastly, ensuring my fortification level for my stacks was at least three. Mostly, they were at strength four. Some were at five but this happened before one of the patches stopped this happening unless you held a port city.

Thank you for the detailed answer Gremell. I'd encourage you to compile these observations (and the other you made) in a thread in the War Room. These should be very valuable for future reference to a great deal of players :)